JPL Scientist Marc Rayman pointing to a Ion engine that gives off a blue light in space. The engine is being used in the probe in the Dawn mission, described as “A Journey to the Beginning of the Solar System.”

Caol Rymond, JPL scientist, holds a small meteorite, a basaltic sample from the asteroid Vesta which was discovered in 1960, at Monday’s Icy World Media Day. Two of the largest inhabitants of the main asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres, survived the collisional environment of the region and have remained intact since their formations.

Cassini Project scientist Linda Spilker pointing to the water-vapor geysers on a model of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. Spiker discussed the mission’s final close flybys planned this year which include close encounters with Saturn’s moons Dione and Enceladus.

LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE >> This year NASA will investigate icy, alien worlds in search of an answer to the big question of where life originated, experts said Monday.

Scientists and engineers gathered Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to explain four important 2015 space missions.

In March the Dawn spacecraft will arrive at icy dwarf planet Ceres. In the summer, the New Horizons mission will provide humankind’s first close-up view of frigid Pluto. In October Cassini will make a close flyby of one of Saturn’s wintry moons, Enceladus, and study geysers there. Plus scientists and engineers will brainstorm for a 2020s probe of the ice-covered Jovian moon Europa.

The Dawn mission is exploring two “baby worlds” in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, said Bob Mase, its project manager at NASA’s JPL. Dawn will be the first spacecraft to arrive at a dwarf planet as well as the first to successfully target two destinations, first dry Vesta and now the largest body in the region: icy, wet Ceres.

“Water is one of the things that we’re most interested in in searching for life in our own solar system and around the universe,” Mase said. “So icy bodies really give us something to search for to look for life to follow that thread and see if we could answer some of those big questions: Where did we come from?”

JPL hosted its Icy Worlds Media Day Monday to share some of NASA’s chilling explorations that will happen this year. In addition to descriptions of the four missions, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. also delivered a State of NASA address via satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Bolden said President Barack Obama showed a “clear vote of confidence” because he approved a $18.5 billion budget for NASA. Obama’s decision made sense as NASA is the first and only nation to land a spacecraft on Mars, he said. Plus, in the past six years, the agency has made the most concrete steps it has ever made in the mission to put humans on the Red Planet.

“Next month, we launch Astronaut Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko on a one-year mission aboard the station to learn more about how to live and work in space for the long term,” Bolden said. “We’ll compare his vital signs to those of his twin brother, Mark, back here on Earth in a first-ever experiment using identical twins to learn more about the effects of living in space.”

While putting humans on Mars in the 2030s is an important goal, scientists still must answer the question of how Earth formed and the origin of life. The icy missions this year hopefully will bring NASA experts closer to that answer.

Dawn will explore the asteroid Ceres, which is like rewinding time 4.5 billion years back to the beginning of our solar system. Scientists believe the thousands of small bodies orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter were budding planets that could’ve turned into a Mercury or Venus if not for the gravitational stirring of Jupiter.

Vesta and Ceres are opposites yet they are both the largest inhabitants in the main asteroid belt. Ceres has a dusty, clay-like surface and evidence of water, so scientists think it is covered by a thick water-ice mantle.

Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, are categorized as “ice dwarfs,” meaning they have solid surfaces, but a significant part of their mass is icy material. Although the Hubble Space Telescope has returned images of Pluto, a close-up look at these worlds via the New Horizons spacecraft is expected to uncover some information about the origins and outskirts of our solar system.

Using a space probe, the United States has been the first nation to reach every planet from Mercury to Neptune. If New Horizons is successful, America will complete the initial reconnaissance of the solar system.

Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, is active and sprays water vapor and icy particles from four geysers in its South Pole. The giant resulting plume is larger than Enceladus, said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. This year Cassini will make its last three close flybys in its planned 20-year mission.

“One of those is going to come within 30 miles of the surface,” Spilker said. “You could imagine Cassini flying through and actually sniffing and tasting the material coming out of those plumes.”

Scientists believe Earth became ripe for life because it had liquid water, the elements and energy. Europa has these exact conditions, and scientists wonder if a second origin of life occurred on this moon, said Kevin Hand, deputy chief scientist of solar system exploration.

“This is a world that we could go to to search for living life, life that is alive today,” Hand said. “That means that if we actually were to find life within Europa, we would be able to understand its biochemistry. We would be able to understand what makes it tick.”

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